Just One Touch
by Cozzybob
Summary: An alternate look at things after the Champion meets Zevran in DA2.  Zevran is in mourning, and has a few too many drinks at the Hanged Man... Zevran/Fenris, angst.


Mediocrememory (on Tumblr) was having trouble with a prompt. I picked it up for her, and this is what happened.

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Zevran refused Isabela her sex, and she was not happy about this in the least. "I can't believe you've fallen in love," she said, and laughed at him, in a way that was both mocking and concerned. "Zevran Aranai… in _love_."

But he didn't refuse her company; after so long hiding among the Dalish and stray city elves of the alienage, assassinating Crows from every shadow in Thedas, having been sober nearly all this time in some careful penance to the man he loved (who now lay rotting in a magnificent tomb that Zevran couldn't bare to look at anymore), the idea of getting spectacularly drunk and forgetting ever having fallen in love in the first place seemed like a great idea.

Isabela had left just a few short hours into his binge, brushing his hair as she strut by with an easy familiarity that only ever came from past experience into the ways and wherefores of Zevran's body. She'd winked at him, but her lip was tugged into a sharp little frown even as she did so: _Look what what love has done to you, Zevran. You should know better._

And didn't he ever.

To Isabela, love was a kind of slavery. He couldn't fault her that, but there was a difference between loving a man, and being forcefully chained to him through marriage. He wanted to explain this to her, and even tried to at some point, but the words had all become twisted together, and she just pat him on the cheek in a way that was slightly more adoring than condescending, and went about her merry business.

The Champion had left for High Town some time ago, but the other elf, Fenris, had stayed in the Hanged Man, observing Zevran's slow and steady downfall for hours now. After Isabela had left, Zevran staggered to the other end of the bar and plopped down next to Fenris, like the piss Corff had served him had stripped Zevran of all the grace he'd been born into.

Fenris did little more than raise a brow at him, glaring in a way Zevran knew entirely too well; he was an assassin, a very good one, and once people knew that, they never looked at him the same way again. All except for one man, perhaps, and he was…

"Can I help you?"

_No_, thought Zevran, and then he amended, _yes, maybe… I do not know anymore_.

But his voice rambled on without him, moving on to other things. "You remind me of him," Zevran slurred. "Except… he had dark hair, and his _vallaslin_ was made blood instead of lyrium, and it was only on one half of his face, he had blue eyes, not green, and he was an archer, and he was Dalish, and—"

"So he was nothing like me," Fenris said, as he smiled faintly in amusement.

Zevran hummed somewhat happily, bobbing his head with a drunk affirmative. "You smile like him, though, all tentative and soft, like you are not fully even aware of it, having lead such a harsh life of pain and misery, which…. which does not make _sense _to me, because I smile easily enough, although perhaps that was beaten into me too, I can never be sure, the Crows being what they are, and… and anyway, you remind me of him, of my Warden, and I had to… to…"

"Tell me?"

"Ah, yes, I had to tell you. That you remind me of him."

"I see," Fenris said.

"No, you don't, but thanks for saying it." Zevran squinted at him, and held onto the table firmly as it began to spin a little too far to the left. "You're very beautiful," he breathed.

This time, Fenris blushed, looking away. The warrior crossed his arms over his chest, looking annoyed now.

"No, no, I meant no offense, you need not be ashamed. It is simply fact," Zevran said. "Nothing wrong with stating facts, no?"

"Is there something you want, assassin?"

"Ah, you wound me." Zevran placed a dramatic hand at his heart, and tipped a little too far backwards. It would have sent him over the edge of his stool, had his reflexes not kicked in and grabbed the table's edge again, pulling him upright. "I'm much more than simply a Crow. In fact, I am a Crow no longer, if that had not been obvious in the way they so clearly want me dead."

"You're still trained as one. I don't trust you."

"Very few do," Zevran sighed. "So this is why you've been observing me. And here I thought you wanted to… play."

"I do not… _play_… with Crows."

Zevran's voice dropped an octave, suddenly serious: "I told you, I am not a Crow." But then it was gone again. "I am, however, very thirsty."

His hand searched for his pint, found it, then made a confused noise when it did not come to him. Zevran continued to tug at the handle ineffectively, before he noticed in a delayed sense of drunken surprise that Fenris's hand was holding it down, clawed metal fingers clenched around the rim of the cup.

"You've had enough for one night," Fenris said. "You should rest."

"Is that… _concern_? So my wily, wily ways are still effective after all. I am a happy man."

"No, you're not."

"No," Zevran sighed, "I suppose I am not."

Fenris sighed as well, but in a wholly more disgusted manner. He lifted Zevran up from his seat and slung one arm around his shoulder, leading the elf up the inn's stairs. Zevran widened his eyes, shaking his head—

"I do not have the coin for a room!"

"You do now."

—and flopped down on a flea-bitten bed. Fenris made to roll him over, but Zevran grabbed him on impulse as he did so, sending Fenris down into the bed on top of him.

Fenris growled, as if expecting attack, suddenly glowing blue in the dark room. He was a force of fury above Zevran, but Zevran was either too drunk or too miserable (or both, most likely) to properly fear death as one should.

"That's very pretty," he whispered, glassy eyes wide as he absorbed the glow.

Fenris made another disgusted noise, and it stopped.

"No, no, where did it go?" Zevran pawed drunkenly at Fenris's shoulder, and sighed. "Do that again. You're amazing."

"No," Fenris said.

"Yes, you are, do not be coy with Zevran, he knows all about pretty things with amazing talents."

"No, I… I won't do it again."

"Why not?"

"Because it…" They stared at each other in the dark—Fenris had yet to move away, and Zevran was in no mood to push him, one hand still clenched gently around the warrior's wrist. "Because it hurts," Fenris confessed.

Zevran blinked at him. "Something so beautiful should not be in such pain," he said.

"I am not beautiful."

"I beg to differ."

"I am _not—_you are infuriating." But, Zevran slowly realized, Fenris had not moved from his strangely sexual, precarious position above Zevran's very drunk, and suddenly very willing, body.

"I wish you'd kiss me," Zevran babbled, having little control of his mouth at this point. "You'd taste like him, I'm sure of it."

Fenris looked pained, suddenly. He blushed and looked away. "I won't take advantage of you," he muttered.

"Ah, so you _do_ want me. I am irresistible, it's true."

"I told you, I won't—"

"I wouldn't mind," Zevran said. "Plenty have taken advantage in the past."

"I'm not one of them."

Fenris climbed off of him, and set a blanket on top of the drunk elf. Zevran curled into the sheets, looking up at him blearily. "I truly wouldn't mind," he repeated. "I really wouldn't." A desperate tinge entered his voice, though he hated it all the same. It said, _You can help me forget for a while_.

Somehow, he suspected Fenris knew all about _forgetting_.

Now exhausted, he closed his eyes. Lips, soft but insistent, brushed against his forehead. "Just a little," Zevran slurred, and turned towards them.

His only answer was the cold click of the bedroom door, leaving him in darkness.


End file.
